The Hungry World Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  Gould studied the quiet courtyard through his powerful binoculars. There was little activity. A gardener was clipping a hedge, carefully and unhurriedly. He paused to glance up and chat with a girl servant who leaned out a nearby window.

  Clearly, nothing had occurred to upset Princess Andra’s quiet mode of secluded life. She had no notion that history was focusing on The Castle, no concept of the vital, if unwilling role, she was about to play.

  Gould laughed. His time table was holding perfectly. Nothing could stop him!

  Lying on his stomach, propped elbows holding the binoculars, he shifted his angle of vision and picked up the small car that approached The Castle gate. He knew that a hidden scanner had picked up the arrival of Marlene and her girls.

  A man had come from the Gothic main entry and was hurrying across the courtyard. Gould knew that he was a guard, although the man wore conventional business garb, not a formal uniform.

  Tension began to tighten Gould’s wiry shoulders as he watched the man reach the massive front gate. The guard spoke into a communicator. Marlene and her three girls got out of the car. Gould knew a scanner was looking them over.

  The THRUSH master-brain’s breath locked inside of him. This was the critical moment. Marlene had used the simple expedient of a phone call to The Castle to pave the way, set the stage. She’d palmed herself off as the tutor from an exclusive girls’ school in Connecticut touring with three of her charges.

  But now that the crucial moment had arrived, would The Castle play the role of Troy to a rented car that must of necessity in this modern age substitute for a wooden horse? Would Marlene’s forged papers pass muster?

  The massive iron gate was grinding open. Marlene and the girls were getting back in the car. It was inching quietly forward.

  They were inside! Marlene and three innocent looking girls had breached a fortress that would have withstood an army.

  Gould felt dizzy, drunken with the thought of success. He turned and slid down the face of the boulder.

  He slipped a communicator the size of a cigarette package from his jacket pocket. He flipped a button and the antenna unfolded itself looking like a thin strand of quivering silver.

  “Papa to Boy Scouts. Papa to Boy Scouts,” Gould intoned, holding the communicator close to his lips.

  “By Scouts here. Standing by.”

  “Sparrows are in the nest. Repeat. Sparrows in nest. Execute RY-three.”

  “Roger.”

  Gould stared vacantly into space a moment, visualizing the unseen movements of the team of THRUSH men who were even now moving into position. They would dash into the courtyard the instant Marlene opened the iron gate to them.

  Gould crawled back up the face of the boulder. He looked down at the blue, glittering waters of the harbor in the distance. Even with the powerful field glasses he would have seen no sign of the nuclear mini-sub. But he knew it was lurking in the jewel-like depths.

  “Isaac Walton to barracuda,” he spoke into the communicator. “Barracuda standing by,” the communicator intoned.”Sparrows in nest,” Gould told the mini-sub commander. “Boy Scouts preparing campfire. Stand by.”

  “Barracuda at the ready,” the THRUSH sub commander assured his chef.

  Gould collapsed the antenna and returned the communicator to his jacket. His gaze lingered a moment longer on The Castle. He wanted to etch this moment, this very pleasurable moment, in his memory for all time to come. It was instances like this that gave life its zest.

  He wondered fleetingly how it would be when he was master of the planet from pole to pole with nothing more to gain.

  Would he, like Alexander The Great, find the toy shiny only as long as he was reaching for it? Would the spectre of boredom arise when there was nothing left to conquer?

  The thought was disturbing and irritating. He put it firmly out of mind. After all, he wasn’t Alexander. Alexander had been a mere piker.

  FIVE

  Princess Andra Chaupetl received her guests in the great hall.

  The décor was a thousand years old. Aztec sculpture graced the hall. A massive calendar stone was set in the center of the glistening expanse of floor tiles. Warrior masks frowned from the towering stone walls.

  Against this background, Andra was every inch a princess. Tall and regal, she was dressed in a simple single-piece garment of purple silk, belted at the waist with links of beaten Aztec silver. Her burnished copper face was sculpted in lines of classic beauty.

  She wore no adornment in the lustrous black hair that fell straight to her lovely shoulders, its ends tilting up.

  “Welcome to The Castle,” she said graciously. “I hope you weren’t detained too long at the gate.”

  “Not at all.” Marlene Reine affected the reserve and accent of a New England schoolteacher. For the masquerade she was wearing a prudish outfit: flat-heeled shoes, heavy stockings, severe, mannish suit of gray. The only makeup she wore was a clever touch here and there to make her look as colorless as possible. Heavy black-rimmed spectacles bridged her nose, and her blonde hair was pulled to a bun at the back of her head.

  The three THRUSH girls who stood modestly behind her had been attired in the drab skirt-and-blouse requirements of a severe girl’s school.

  “I must admit,” Marlene added, “it did give me a turn, obeying a voice from an unseen source and having my person and credentials undergo inspection by a television camera.”

  “We pray for the day,” Princess Andra sighed, “when such precautions will no longer be necessary.”

  “We are grateful for an audience under any circumstance.” Marlene said. “It is these rare experiences that broaden our girls. We like to think we turn out the most cultured young ladies in all of the United States.”

  “Of course,” the princess smiled.

  Marlene flicked a hand. “Come, girls! This is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Princess Andra, may I present Maude, Ethel, and Helen.”

  The girls moved a pace forward and spoke in unison: “We are honored, Your Serene Highness.”

  As they started to drop into deep curtsies, Princess Andra took the hand of the nearest girl. “No, my dears. Here, one human being doesn’t bend a knee before another.”

  “Yes, girls,” Marlene said with a flicker of a smile, “let’s avail ourselves of all that this unique place has to offer.”

  Something about the words caused a slight frown to chase across Andra’s smooth forehead. She glanced at Marlene. The eyes behind the heavy spectacles were slits of fire.

  The princess fell back a step. She flung a glance about herself. The three girls had casually ringed her in. They no longer had the appearance of innocent school girls. Their sinewy motions and eyes were suggestive of predatory cats.

  The princess paled, but said coolly, “ I think we’d better have a second, closer look at your credentials, Madame Reine.”

  “Now, girls!” Marlene said.

  As she spoke, she turned. A single guard was on duty in the arched entrance to the great hall. He stiffened to alertness as the swift change shattered the scene before him.

  Marlene’s camera, carried on a shoulder strap, was such a usual accoutrement that it had passed unnoticed. She was lifting it, sighting through the viewfinder, as she turned.

  Behind her, Marlene heard the sudden scuffle as the girls closed in on the princess. Before her, the guard hurled himself forward, his mouth opening to shout a warning.

  Marlene depressed a button that might have triggered the shutter on an ordinary camera. The weapon emitted a cough. She had the guard squarely in the telescopic sight that was disguised as a viewfinder.

  She saw the dart strike the guard in the left cheek. He lifted a hand, as he would brush away a fly. And then, a convulsive arching of his back jerked him on tiptoe. He seemed to hang suspended for a bare tick in time; then all the joints of his body folded and he collapsed in a heap.

  The dart that had struck him had been a miniature syringe, emptying on impact the deadly, synthe
sized drug. In the instant the drug had flashed through bloodstream to brain, the guard had died.

  Before the guard hit the floor, Marlene was spinning about. The girls had overpowered the princess, wrestled her to the floor. They were a thrashing, struggling tangle. Then one of the girls seized the princess by the hair and slammed her head against the floor. The princess went limp. The girls disengaged themselves and rose slowly.

  Marlene’s face burned with color.

  “You fool!” She slapped one of the girls across the cheek. “You know the importance of keeping the princess wholly intact until her brains have been picked! If you’ve done more than give her a mild concussion, you’ll answer to Dion himself!”

  Marlene dropped to one knee beside Princess Andra. She lifted a limp wrist, found the pulse. It was steady and even. The princess’s breathing was normal. Marlene watched the royal eyelids flutter.

  “Lucky for you she’s okay.” Marlene got to her feet. “Tape her wrists and mouth, and hold her over there. The male team that Dion code-named Boy Scouts will be at the front gate any minute.”

  Marlene lingered for the time it took one of the girls to remove a roll of tape from her small clutch bag, give a savage yank on Andra’s arms, and begin taping Andra’s wrists behind her back.

  The soles of Marlene’s flat shoes made quick whispers across the polished tiles. As she reached the arched entry, she glanced back. The girls had sealed Andra’s lips with tape. The group was disappearing into the shadows of an alcove where stood wax figures in antique conquistadore armor.

  A wild excitement, headier than any liqueur or drug, was surging through Marlene. The floor plan that Dion had sketched for her had etched itself across her mind.

  The gate controls were in the low north tower that overlooked the main courtyard, the portal to the tower a few yards down the enormous vaulted hallway that connected the great hall to the indoor gardens. Marlene raced to the massive, brass-studded bulkhead of teakwood. She dropped her hand to the heavy bronze door lever, paused to steady her breathing.

  She depressed the lever, heard the metal bolt inside slide from its cradle.

  The perfectly-balance door opened at a touch. Before Arlene a narrow stairway of stone wound like a corkscrew aspiring to the heights of the tower.

  Marlene went up quickly, with the agility of a lovely ballerina. At the top of the stairway, steeped in gloom, was a small platform sealed off by a door much lighter and smaller than the one below.

  Marlene rapped quickly. The door opened, framing a powerfully built guard who wore khaki pants and shirt and a cap with a glossy visor.

  “Hello,” Marlene smiled into the swarthy face, “I’m the guest of Princess Andra.”

  “I know.” The man nodded. “The lady from the school in New England.”

  Marlene casually moved past the man into the circular observation room. Slits in the thick stone wall had afforded the original builders a 360-degree view of the courtyard and outer walls. Electronics had refined this primitive mode of observation. A complicated console occupied a third of the room; a bank of visi-screens pulsed with views picked up by the scanners outside.

  “Princess Andra is getting acquainted with the girls preparatory to taking us on a tour of The Castle,” Marlene said. “It afforded me the opportunity to have a look at this dreadfully fascinating equipment.”

  The guard looked at Marlene, the console, the doorway. “Madame, I don’t know---No one is usually allowed here.”

  Marlene glided to him, laid her hand on his arm. Her smile flashed, warm, friendly, blandly innocent. “The field of electro-magnetic phenomena bewitches me. In fact I’ve dabbled a bit in electronics.”

  “Our setup is nothing unusual or spectacular,” the guard said. “I’m sure you’d find it uninteresting.”

  “Oh, no, not at all!” Marlene twittered her hand airily. “However, if you feel we’re stretching a rule, I surely won’t overstep my bounds as a guest. The princess has been more than generous to us already.”

  The guard relaxed, following Marlene to the doorway. “I’m glad you understand, Madame.”

  Marlene gave a short, good-natured laugh. “Of course I do. Oh, one thing!”

  “Yes, Madame?”

  “A snapshot of you to add to my mementoes of this unforgettable trip. It’s all so exotic and exciting! A real live guard in a tower of an ancient castle. Won’t I be the envy when I return to school! Just a few steps back. That’s it.”

  “Madame, I’m not sure---“

  “Oh, posh! It will only take a moment.” Marlene had the camera-gun raised. She was sighting through it. “Wonderful! You look so marvelously efficient, as strong as the stone wall in the background.”

  The camera coughed in the midst of her words. The guard slapped at the bee-sting on his chin. Every nerve and muscle in his body clenched tight, then went limp as burlap. He struck the floor with a sodden sound, without a quiver.

  Muscles flowing as smoothly as those of a tigress, Marlene closed the door, stepped across the dead guard’s body, and glided to the console.

  She removed the heavy spectacles and dropped them in the pocket of her jacket. Her gaze flipped across the control buttons of the console.

  She didn’t have much time to study the setup. On the visi-screen directly in front of her, a car appeared in the narrow road. As the outside scanner picked up the intruding vehicle, a red light pulsed on the console. The thin wail of a siren began sounding across the courtyard.

  From Marlene’s sensuous lips spilled words not at all in the vocabulary of a New England tutor. She looked at the glowing screen which showed the foreground of the courtyard. Four guards had already appeared down there, armed with high-powered rifles. They were running towards positions on the outer wall, summoned by the siren.

  Marlene flicked a wisp of golden hair from her temple. She had to chance the superficial knowledge of her quick survey of the controls had given her.

  Her long fingers flashed to a row of blue buttons. As she depressed a control, she watched the visi-screen that framed the massive iron door in the outer wall. The picture remained static, still-life. Failure---

  She concentrated on the controls, forcing herself not to waste a precious second looking at the way the approaching THRUSH car was looming in the eye of the outside scanner.

  Not one control, she thought, but a combination. How devilishly clever of them. Her fingers danced over the buttons. And then she felt the slight vibration. She had connected.

  She strained toward the visi-screen covering the forward courtyard. The ponderous door was in motion, lifting and tilting under the power of its concealed electric motors. The THRUSH car shot through into the courtyard, brushing its top against the rising door in passage.

  Marlene held her breath and watched a brief battle. No battle, really. A massacre, with THRUSH agents cutting the disorganized guards to pieces.

  It was over in an instant, with the siren a thin, ridiculous wailing that kept the sudden silence from being total.

  Marlene drew in a long breath. Little remained to do now. The THRUSH men would complete operation Boy Scout simply by walking in, carrying Princess Andra Chaupetl out, and removing the female sea-farmer (the phrase was Marlene’s own) to a destination where the brain-picking could be carried out in leisure.

  The certainty of success overwhelmed Marlene. Despite the objections that had been raised when Dion Gould first proposed his plan, despite the reluctant go-ahead that had finally been given, Dion was going to rule the world! And who ruled a man if not his mistress?

  Then the burst of laughter caught in Marlene’s throat. The outside scanner had picked up the approach of yet another vehicle. It was still farther down the steep road. It disappeared, too far yet to make out details. It looked like a jeep.

  Marlene strained her eyes as the ugly man with one bulging eye was driving the jeep. Beside him was a leanly handsome man. A familiar face. Marlene had studied photographs of it. Napoleon Solo, the U.N.C.L.E
. agent.

  Solo was shouting a warning at the one-eyed man. He grabbed the driver’s shoulder. He was trying to scream some sense into the one-eyed man’s skull. But the driver was more than half-blind insofar as caution went. He cuffed Solo aside.

  Solo grabbed the wheel, tried to wrestle the jeep up the embankment, but the one-eyed man folded himself across the steering wheel, straightened the slithering jeep, and bore straight ahead to his destination.

  He could see nothing but the open gateway ahead, think of nothing except that his princess was in mortal danger. His own life, and that of Solo’s counted for little, weighed against the meaning of the open gateway and the cry of the siren.

  The jeep shot through the opening into the courtyard. It was magnificent---and completely foolhardy. It was the wild charge of a Don Quixote with one eye, crazed with the thought that he had failed his trust, his job.

  It left Napoleon Solo with no choice, except to draw his U.N.C.L.E. special as a futile gesture inside the lion’s mouth.

  Enrapt, Marlene watched in the courtyard visi-screen. As the jeep smashed into the rear of the THRUSH car, Solo and the one-eyed one were diving out.

  Solo hit on his shoulder, rolled to the partial shelter of rock planter. The rattle of a THRUSH gun caused him to twist his body and fire. A THRUSH man fell from a nearby doorway, clutching his middle.

  Then a THRUSH man tossed a nerve-gas grenade with cool accuracy. Smoke billowed over Solo’s temporary cover. He rose, stumbled from the cloud, coughing and holding his throat. He took half a dozen wobbling steps, slipped to his knees, tried to raise his gun, and collapsed.

  The ugly, one-eyed man had vanished from the range of the scanner. The fool had reached the main entry. He must be into the inner gardens!

  Then Marlene’s ears, not her eyes, told her the rest of it. A blast of gunfire. A scream. And silence. The one-eyed man had paid for his foolhardy devotion to his job with his life.